What Drives Tenten?
by xenu1275
Summary: The motives and history of Konoha's most underdeveloped ninja. Each chapter gives a different answer to the title's question. Last chapter--please review!
1. Pride

It was pride.

It was also shame, pride's conjoined twin; the possession of the one made her more vulnerable to the other. Shame whenever her father's eyes fell on her forehead-protector and then flicked derisively away, and she could clearly hear his thoughts: _Just a kunoichi, after all._ Shame whenever she pictured the scene of her own birth, painstakingly reconstructed from the hazy recollections of nurses, doctors, and her own mother:

_A man stands straight-backed and still outside a hospital room, from which the anguished cries of a woman can be heard. He is tall, muscular, physically perfect save for a slight unnaturalness in his stance; there is something not-quite-right about the bend of his left knee beneath his blue trousers. The woman, his wife, desperately wants him at her side, but he stands firmly planted outside the door. Birthing and babies lie strictly within a woman's domain, and he will not enter, no matter how piteously she might call his name. After some time his wife's voice is joined by the high-pitched wails of an infant, and at last his stony expression shows signs of life as he looks expectantly at the door._

_A doctor, young and tired and bloodstained, exits hurriedly and turns left before his progress is halted by the waiting man, who extends a beefy arm to grab hold of the doctor's shoulder._

_"Well?" the man demands, unceremoniously spinning the doctor around to face him._

_The doctor instinctively tries to pull away but finds that he cannot, that the man's grip is unbreakable. "Are you the husband, then?" he asks. "I was just coming out to find you." _

_The man nods curtly, just once, and the doctor continues, "Well, your wife is out of danger now. It was a difficult birth, as you both knew it would be. I am afraid that this will be your last child."_

_The man nods once more, and other than a brief flickering in his eyes he does not react to this news. The doctors warned him that it was inadvisable for his wife to get pregnant, but he and she both knew that there was no question of remaining childless._

_"Is he healthy?" the man demands. This is his real concern, the reason he has kept his silent vigil outside this door._

_"'He?'" echoes the doctor blankly. "I'm afraid I don't know who you're—"_

_"My son!" the man barks impatiently. "Is he healthy?"_

_The doctor's brows knit. It takes him a moment to process the man's statement, for as far as he knows the couple has no other children. Then it dawns on him – the mistaken assumption at the root of the man's question. _

_"Nono," he replies with an emphatic shake of the head, "you don't have a son. The child your wife just bore is a daughter – a little girl."_

_The doctor's words affect the man like a blow. His eyes widen, his mouth gapes, and his hand releases its grip on the doctor's shoulder. He stares aghast for a few uncomfortable moments, then abruptly turns on his heel and starts off down the hall. His gait, like his stance, is just a little wrong._

_"Sir!" calls the doctor, flabbergasted. "Sir!" But the man either doesn't hear or doesn't care, just continues his awkward retreat from his wife and daughter._

It had taken some time to learn the details of that day, but Tenten had been utterly unsurprised at her findings. Her father had once been a great shinobi of the Leaf, powerful, deadly, and chauvinistic. But that was before the loss of his left leg. His prosthesis was well-made and inconspicuous, but it could not give him the mobility needed to resume life as a ninja. He had retired and opened a weapons shop, and placed his hopes in the next generation, in a son who would carry on his legacy. Instead he got Tenten.

His disappointment knew no bounds, for there was no place in his world for a daughter, no possibility of a man like him reconsidering his belief that women must always be subordinate and docile. He had not even given Tenten, his only child, his name, considering it better to let the name die out than continue in the person of a girl who would only change it anyway. So when Tenten entered the Academy she was single-named and unclaimed like an orphan.

"Why bother with the Academy?" her father had asked her, not looking up as he sharpened one of the shop's many swords. "At best you'll only ever be a backup. In the shinobi world, women play an auxiliary role."

She had felt it then for the first time, the painful stirring of her pride. She was barely six, and until now her brown eyes had always regarded her cold and distant father with something like worship. But as she looked at him she knew, somehow, in a wordless six-year-old way, that he was _wrong_, that there was something unyielding and indomitable within her.

She seized a _kunai_ from where it lay at her father's elbow, newly sharpened and dangerous, and hurled it with all of her tiny strength across the shop, to lodge in the bulls-eye of the practice target tacked to the opposite wall. Her father did not look up, did not spare either her or the target a glance.

"Do what you want," he said indifferently. "It has nothing to do with me."

So she entered the Academy, where her prodigious skill with _kunai_ served her well. Her pride, that roaring monster inside her, she kept hidden, along with the shame she felt when she looked around and realized that the majority of her classmates, and all the most skilled ones, were male, and that the great shinobi they studied were also exclusively men. She would never have admitted it, not even to herself, but she felt a burgeoning shame at her own femininity.

Then she learned about Tsunade, heir to a great shinobi clan, one-third of the legendary _san nin_, mightiest kunoichi of the Leaf. Her pride swelled up from her chest to her tongue, and before she knew it she had declared, "I'm going to be as great as Lady Tsunade!" Her classmates laughed at her then, for other than the _kunai_ she had no special talent, but she barely heard them over the singing of her heart.

"Tsunade was an exception," her father said dismissively that evening. "There are always exceptions. But most people, including you Tenten, are governed by averages, and on average men make better ninja than women." At his words her joy gave way before the taint of mediocrity.

Then came the assignment of teams, and whoever chose each triplet might as well have known Tenten's secrets and calculated the selection for maximum damage to her pride. Neji Hyuuga, casually brilliant and contemptuous of effort, was a shining standard she could never reach, and in the darkest parts of her mind she couldn't help but wonder if that was because she'd been born a girl.

The presence of Rock Lee might have been of some comfort, for in the beginning she was far superior to him in almost every respect. But Lee's rapid improvement and Gai's faith in him – a faith he had never lavished on her – had the opposite effect. Tenten knew that her muscles would never attain the same brute strength as Lee's, and beside his raw power she felt weak and vulnerable. If even Lee, lacking the ability to perform the most basic _ninjutsu_ and _genjutsu_, could advance to such a level, how could she ever hope to compete?

Another kunoichi might have quit. Many did, at this stage, when they began to mature into adulthood and discovered that they would never have the same physical strength as their male comrades. Others changed their focus to medical _ninjutsu_ or espionage, specialties that would keep them off the front lines. But Tenten's pride would not allow it, kept insisting, quietly but intractably, that she was the equal of any man and had only to prove it.

So though the most visible competition on Team Gai was always between Neji and Lee, Tenten competed too, no less fiercely but in silence. She warred against her body, her doubts, and the spiraling heights reached by her teammates. She was determined not to be left behind and not to be a burden.

It was a painful time for her, for she both loved and hated her teammates. Loved them, for their courage and friendship, and hated them for making her feel inferior. When she watched them train, when she watched them fight, she felt the desire to surpass them lodge uncomfortably in the midst of her affection for them, like a sharp blade embedded in tender flesh. When she drew breath she could feel it cutting, slicing her up from within.

Just once she let her pride get the best of her. It was shortly after she made _chuunin_, an accomplishment somewhat dimmed by the fact that Neji was already a _jounin_. They were on a mission to the Land of Lightning, and suddenly came upon the sight of three enemy Cloud ninja unwisely encamped in a small dip about a quarter of a kilometer away.

Neji's eyes narrowed as he studied them through his Byakugan. "No doubt about it," he said. "These are the same three we encountered before. They must be tracking us." They had narrowly escaped these Cloud ninja the previous day. The three fought with a peculiar style that combined _taijutsu_ and lightning-natured chakra – just one blow to the wrong place and you could go into cardiac arrest or suffer irreparable nerve damage.

"We can't have them following us back to Konoha," said Tenten, and Neji nodded in agreement.

"No, we'll have to stop them here," he replied. "Lee and I will go in. You stay back and get ready to pull us out should we be injured."

Neji, all his attention focused on the enemy, had no time to avoid what came next: Tenten's blow, a right hook straight to his jaw. She had neither Lee's brute strength nor Neji's Gentle Fist, but still Neji tasted blood as he reeled backwards.

He recovered his balance quickly and settled into his Gentle Fist pose, still not quite sure what had happened. Disengaging his Byakugan he beheld Tenten, clutching a fistful of _kunai_ in one hand and a scroll in the other. Her face was livid with a rage he would scarcely have believed her capable of.

"Don't you _ever_," she snarled, "underestimate _me_. I'm _nobody_'s backup."

Neji kept staring in incomprehension until Lee stepped between them, his arms spread and an uncharacteristically solemn look on his face. "Tenten is right, Neji. She is our teammate. It is not right to leave her behind. I for one would like to have some weapons cover when we engage the Cloud ninja."

Lee was looking at Neji as he spoke, but his words went straight to Tenten's core. Not for the first time it occurred to her that, of all her comrades from the Leaf, Lee was probably the best equipped to understand her private struggle.

Neji's eyes darted between Lee and Tenten. He was in charge here; the final decision was his. There was a time when he would have been impervious to arguments based on teamwork and desire rather than tactics, but in his ascent to _jounin_ he had left that arrogance behind. "I understand," he said at last, relaxing from his Gentle Fist stance. "Tenten will come in with us, then. We should in fact have weapons cover."

Lee lowered his arms and Tenten stowed her weapons, and they prepared to move out. "Tenten," said Neji in a low voice right before they launched their attack, "I apologize. But _never_ do that again."

She never did. After that it wasn't necessary.

Pride and shame were like two whetstones sharpening her soul between them, driving her mercilessly onward without rest. If she endured long enough, suffered long enough, then surely someday she would emerge fine and deadly, a mighty weapon of the Leaf. Surely, at the end, she would shine.


	2. Guilt

It was guilt.

Outwardly she was calm, responsible, cheerful and even-tempered. But the clean white pages of her life were stained with blood that she labored every day to blot out. She labored in vain and she knew it, yet the futility of her actions did nothing to dampen her resolve. If anything it drove her harder, for she was of one of those shinobi who is bravest in the face of defeat.

***

The source of Tenten's guilt could be found in her earliest memory. It was night and she was frightened of the dark forest around her, alive with the sound of rustling leaves and stirring animals. She yearned toward the bright comforting lights of the city, reaching out of her father's grasp to clutch at them with chubby little fists. She wanted to go _there_, not deeper into the scary woods.

"Shhhhh, Tenten," he soothed her when she whined. "Be quiet. Daddy's here." His voice was slow and comforting, and immediately she felt better. Her daddy was her whole world.

On his broad back, below the shoulder on which her tiny chin rested, was a bulging cloth sack. She didn't know what was in it or how he got it, but it was fun to watch the leafy shadows cast by the moonlight ripple across it as they moved farther and farther away from the city. Suddenly Tenten's smooth brow furrowed in puzzlement as one of those shadows stretched and then climbed up off the bag to loop over her father's shoulder and around his neck.

Her father made an abrupt choking noise and reached for his throat, dropping Tenten in the process. She started to cry but then stopped as her father fell to his knees, her shock overcoming her displeasure at being unceremoniously dumped on the ground. Daddy was clutching at his neck and gasping for air, and his eyes looked huge and bulgy.

"You made a mistake," said a strange voice from the darkness, and then a man stepped into view from behind a tree. He was dark and lean with spiky hair gathered into a ponytail. He scared Tenten and she began to cry again. "You should never have crossed into this clearing, where the moonlight lets me manipulate shadows even at night. If you had stayed out of the light I couldn't have touched you." Then he did something with his hands and her father started breathing again, though he didn't stand up and he didn't reach out for her. "I've switched from shadow strangulation to shadow mimicry," the man declared. "I don't intend to kill you, just bring you back to the village to answer for your crimes."

"Then," her father gasped hoarsely, "you have killed me."

The man shrugged. "Not necessarily," he replied. "The man whose home you broke into isn't dead yet. If he survives you might too, considering the circumstances." His eyes strayed to Tenten as he said this, and with a child's instinct she knew him to be a kind person. She ceased crying and looked from him to her daddy, taking in everything but understanding nothing.

"Let me go," her father pleaded. "We'll never come back here. No one would know."

The man shook his head slowly. "Can't do that," he said. "It's a pain, but I have to bring you in."

At this her father began to struggle. His muscles twitched and his breathing grew ragged as he tried fruitlessly to throw off the jutsu binding him. With the talent Tenten had inherited from him she could vaguely feel his chakra pushing against the other man's.

"_Stop_ that," the spiky-haired man grunted, clenching his jaw. "You'll only hurt yourself." Then he began to sweat and cried, "_Damn_ you have a lot of chakra!"

"Tenten," her daddy said tightly, looking over to where she watched it all in confusion, "I want you to do something for Daddy. Can you do that?"

Tenten's big brown eyes widened and she nodded. He was her whole world and she would do anything he asked.

"Okay," he said, the strain showing on his face as he continued to struggle, "stand up, Tenten, and come here."

She obeyed.

"Now reach into Daddy's pocket and take out one of the papers. You know – one of the pretty ones you like so much."

She stared at him solemnly and then replied, "Not supposed to touch those. You said."

Her father grimaced. He was shaking. "Now I'm saying it's okay. Just take one, Tenten. Do it now."

Slowly, cautiously, suspicious of this sudden change in policy, Tenten did as she was told. The white paper with its curly black writing, lit by the moonlight, seemed to shine in her small hand. She looked at it admiringly, for she had never before been allowed to handle one.

"Good girl," said her daddy, and warmth spread through her at the sound of his approval. "Now, Tenten, I want you to carry that paper over to the man. Put it down next to his feet, but don't touch him. Can you do that?"

Eager for more approval, she nodded brightly. " 'Course," she said proudly.

"You," gasped the man with spiky hair, "don't want to do this. Don't get the kid involved."

Her daddy ignored him and kept looking at her, then said, "Go now, Tenten. Be careful."

She stood up straight and clutched the paper tightly, then began slowly to pick her way across the clearing. She watched Spiky-hair the whole time, even though she knew somehow that he was no danger to her.

"That's my girl," called her daddy when she reached her destination. "Now just put it down next to his feet, and _don't touch him_."

She looked down at the paper regretfully, still powerfully attracted by its mysterious loopy markings. But her desire to please her father was stronger than her desire to keep the paper, so she set it down about six inches from Spiky-hair, and turned it so that its long edge was parallel to his shoe.

"Kid," gasped Spiky-hair, looking down at her. "Your name is Tenten, right?"

She nodded.

"Well, no one's gonna hurt you, Tenten, but you need to listen to me. I want you to tear up that paper."

She frowned and looked back at her daddy, unsure. He shook his head. "Don't do that, Tenten," he called to her. "Just come on back to me now."

"Tenten," said Spiky-hair more urgently, "tear it up, then _run_. Get out of here and run for the village. Someone will find you – you'll be okay."

Tenten thought a moment. "I'm sorry mister," she said at last, as politely as she could. "I have to go back to my daddy now." Then she started back to where her daddy waited for her.

Before she got halfway there the paper bomb she had just planted exploded, detonated by her father from across the clearing. The man with the spiky hair was caught in an untenable position – rendered immobile by his own jutsu, he could not release his hold over his prey for fear of counterattack. Neither could he use his jutsu to control the little girl, for Tenten's father had so much chakra that it was taking all of his reserves just to control him, and even that was insufficient to stop him from forming the detonation sequence with his hands. The best solution he'd been able to come up with was to wait until the little girl was out of the way and then release the shadow-mimicry jutsu at the same time as he threw himself into the underbrush, and hope he got enough distance to survive the explosion. But he never got the chance, for Tenten's father detonated the bomb long before his daughter was safely clear.

Tenten was lifted off her feet and hurled into the woods, tumbling head-over-heels for a few terrifying instants before she struck a tree trunk with a sickening _crack_ and lost consciousness.

That was the end of her first memory. It was also the last time she saw her father alive.

***

The shadow-user whom her father had blown up had been his second victim of the day, the first being an elderly shopkeeper whose house he'd burgled and whose throat he'd cut. Neither victim had survived, and though Tenten had no recollection of it she was told that she had been present for the first murder as well as the second, had watched her father rob and slice the old man.

The Leaf's justice had been summary and quick, a heavy ANBU sword that separated her father's head from his shoulders, just half a kilometer away from the site where the paper bomb had gone off and attracted the attention of Konoha's black ops. On their way back to report to the Hokage that night the ANBU carried five burdens: the messy remains of the man with spiky hair, her father's head, her father's body, her father's bag, and tiny wounded Tenten.

In the years that followed not one word of blame was ever directed at Tenten. Everyone was kind to her – the staff at Konoha's little orphanage, the wizened old Hokage, even the Nara clan, whose shinobi she had helped her father to kill. She had just been a little girl, they all said, and she was not responsible for anything that happened that night.

Intellectually these arguments all made perfect sense. But intellect had nothing to do with what Tenten felt, an acid guilt that dissolved her from within. With her own hands she had placed the bomb that killed the Nara, and in her veins ran the blood of the man who had set it off. Indeed, she was the last thing that remained of her criminal father on this earth, for even his name had been lost when he died – Tenten had not been able to remember it when they woke her in the hospital. For a long time she suffered her guilt in silence, hiding it from others but never escaping from it herself.

Then one day she was visited at the orphanage by the Third Hokage. This was not so unusual, for Sarutobi had made it his business to see that the little girl was not burdened too much by loneliness. On this day, though, he had come with a purpose.

"Tenten," he said gravely, addressing her seriously as he would an adult. "We don't know much about your family. But we do know that your father wielded tremendous chakra, and we suspect you may be able to do the same. I think it would be a good idea for you to go to the Academy and learn to be a Leaf ninja. What do you say to that?"

Tenten's brown eyes regarded Sarutobi steadily. In front of him she did not bother to disguise her natural solemnity, and he thought as always that she seemed a little too old for her years. "If I become a ninja," she said slowly, "wouldn't I have to hurt people?"

Sarutobi nodded. "Yes, Tenten, that is part of a ninja's duty. But a bigger part is protection of this village and the people in it. As a Leaf shinobi, you would be in a position to save other children from being orphaned like you."

Tenten heard his words and took from them a single fact: as a shinobi she could serve the Leaf. She knew that she owed the Leaf a great debt, for lives taken and for care received, and she hungered for redemption. "I'll do it," she said decisively.

So the next year she entered the Academy, where she displayed a natural aptitude for edged weapons. She also learned about the legendary Lady Tsunade, and thought privately that if she could become that strong, she would be capable of such service as might expiate her sins.

Eventually she was assigned to a team with Neji and Lee and Gai, and for the first time since her father she found herself at home, surrounded by comrades who came to feel like family as the years passed. She was even, to her great surprise, _happy_ with her life as a kunoichi. Combat seemed to agree with her nature.

But this did not assuage her guilt. On the contrary, it fed it, for she couldn't help but wonder if someone as stained as she was had the right to feel happy. So she worked even harder, pushing herself to keep up with her exceptional team, finding in the process an intense satisfaction that again stung her conscience, on and on in a vicious cycle.

Her teammates had drives of their own, of course. But she came to know that her motives and theirs were fundamentally different, for theirs were attainable, finite. Hers, though, was like a gaping void into whose blackness she cast her accomplishments. It would never be satisfied, never be full, because no number of acts of service could change the past. Her sin was always there, compounded daily by the fact that in spite of herself she could not remember her father with anything other than love.

So she pushed on, driven forward by guilt that was less a weight than a goad. Every _kunai_ she threw chipped away fractionally at her sin, leaving a miniscule nick in its colossal face. If she lived a thousand years she could never destroy it completely, but nevertheless she had no choice but to try.


	3. Love, Part 1

_Love, Part 1_

It was love.

Of course she didn't know that at first. She only knew that he reminded her of sunlight reflecting off the polished blade of a _kunai,_ of the decisive _thwack_ of a _shuriken_ striking the soft center of a target, of all things clear and pure. Precision and purity had always spoken to her soul, and thus it was natural that she should be drawn to their embodiment, to the white eyes and shining skill of Neji Hyuuga.

In the early days at the Academy she simply admired him from a distance, as one might admire a finely honed weapon displayed in a place of honor. Forged and tempered in the crucible of his ancient clan, he was beautiful and excellent, distant and refined. It was no effort at all for him to master the arts of the shinobi; they were encoded in the very marrow of his cells. Tenten was the unremarkable daughter of two unremarkable _chuunin_ and thus had to work to develop her abilities, but she sought to achieve with her jutsu the same clean perfection that was at the core of his being.

She excelled beyond the expectations of those who had written her off as a merely average kunoichi, but if Neji ever noticed that her art and his shared a common theme he never said so. He did not have occasion to, as he and Tenten never had a conversation.

Then the teams were chosen, and with a thrill of joy and no small amount of fear she heard her name called along with his. To be chosen to stand beside him, to be mentioned in the same breath as him, to be part of a group of which he was a member – it was the greatest honor of Tenten's young life. But it was immediately obvious that Neji did not share this feeling. His white eyes slid over his teammates without really seeing them, seeming always to be fixed on something distant and invisible.

She did try to get his attention at their first meeting. Gai asked them each to state their goals, and after Neji demurred, she said eagerly, "I would like to become a strong ninja, like the legendary kunoichi Tsunade-sama!" She was looking at Gai when she said it but really she was speaking to _him_, telling him _I will become worthy of you._

He did not seem to notice. But he would, she promised herself, he would.

They grew up and grew more powerful, and to Tenten's amazement Neji became more beautiful still. Always before her feelings for him had been a kind of chaste worship, but now they were inflamed, tainted by desire so strong it kept her awake at night and threw off her formerly flawless aim. Approaching him was out of the question; he was still absorbed in some private vision of his own, and she was convinced he had never actually seen her.

So she worked harder still, determined to shine so brightly that he would have to look at her, to climb until she ascended into whatever heights had drawn his gaze. But as time passed a growing part of her heart darkened with despair and whispered in an ever-louder voice that she would never reach him. Rough scarred hands like hers had no business touching a living monument to perfection.

On a courier mission one day Neji and Tenten found themselves on the pebbled bank of a shallow river, surrounded by five Grass ninja. Before either could act the Grass-nin simultaneously made a series of hand signs, and from each one of them a shimmering curtain of energy extended sideways and overhead to form a translucent pentagonal cage with an enemy shinobi at each vertex. They were trapped.

"Don't touch it," Neji warned her, his Byakugan engaged as he examined the enclosure for weaknesses. "It's charged with lightning-type chakra. Any contact will get you electrocuted."

"That's right," said the Grass ninjas' leader, a tall thin woman with hollow cheeks and long black hair. "This field will kill anyone who touches it. But no one has to die today – just give us the message you're carrying."

Neji's eyebrows rose slightly. "It is clear you are skilled," he said in his cold way, "but you are also misinformed. We have already delivered the message to the Kazekage and are now on our way back to Konoha. We have nothing to give you."

"Liar!" called one of the Grass-nin, a small wiry man forming the corner nearest Tenten.

Neji turned and pinned him in the unblinking glare of his Byakugan. The man seemed to shrink into himself and his section of the enclosure wavered and hummed slightly.

"It could be true," said the leader calmly. "But if that's the case, you'll just have to tell us what the message said."

"What?" exclaimed Tenten, genuinely offended. "We didn't _read_ it! What sort of shinobi do you think we are?"

"I think," the woman answered slowly, "that we won't know anything for sure until we question you individually. Lies often disintegrate under torture." She nodded at her comrades and they began moving inward, pushing their flickering force field toward the captive Leaf-nin. Neji and Tenten were forced to draw closer together to avoid contact with it, until at last they stood back-to-back, their faces perilously close to the lethal curtain of crackling electricity and chakra.

"If I draw this in more, you die," said the head Grass-nin. "But I don't want that – yet. What I want is for the weakest one of you to come outside to, ah, _talk_ with me. I will make it possible for that person to exit the field."

Both of them remained silent. Whichever of them left the field had a better chance of survival than the one remaining within it, but would also be tortured for information. Neither option was appealing.

"Who is weakest?" the woman demanded. "Who is expendable? If you don't choose, I will close this field now and search your corpses for the information I want."

"If you do that," Neji observed, "you run the risk of destroying whatever we might know about the message. Then you would have nothing."

"I haven't discounted the possibility that you're still carrying the message," the woman replied. "If that's so, then killing you is the correct choice. If it's not so, and you refuse to surrender a teammate, then your stubbornness would mean that you probably wouldn't give me the information anyway, no matter what I do, so killing you is _still_ the correct choice. The only option where you don't both die is the one where you do as I say, right now."

Tenten's heart was beating harder and faster, so that she felt sure that if she looked under her blouse she would be able to see it throbbing, pounding outward on her chest like a prisoner on the door of his cell. Pressed against her back, though, was the still and unwavering presence of Neji, radiating calm. She fought back a sudden impulse to seize his hand.

"I see," said Neji. "Very well-reasoned. You remind me of someone I know … But it will not be necessary to kill us now. One of us will come out to you."

Tenten drew in a sharp breath. Neji was captain; the decision was up to him. The woman had said that she wanted the weakest but she had no way of knowing who that was. If they sent the strongest, Neji, then he could perhaps try to disable the Grass-nin. But it would be five on one, steep odds for any shinobi, and there was no way to do it without risking the life of Tenten, still imprisoned in the field. For the sake of his teammate Neji would have no choice but to submit to his captors. Meanwhile she would be watching and surely, confronted with the sight of him in pain, she would break and tell this woman that they did in fact have the message, stowed securely in Neji's pack.

If they sent out the weakest, Tenten, then she too would be prevented from acting, but would buy more time for Neji to figure something out. Neji was both more likely to find and execute some method of escape and less likely to crack under the strain of seeing a teammate tortured. He was also less expendable.

To Tenten it was unavoidable. She should go out to buy more time, and endure as long as possible for the sake of the mission. She straightened up, opened her mouth to tell the woman to take her.

"If it's the weakest you want, then I will come out to you," said Neji before she could utter a word.

"Neji . . ." said Tenten, twisting her head around to look at him. She wanted to tell him that he was being a fool, that there was no way she could ever get out of this without him, no way she could stand mute while they hurt him, but the words didn't come.

"Fine," said the Grass woman. "I don't care. Either one will do. Take my hand – as long as you have hold of it, you'll be able to pass through the field." Then she and one other Grass-nin detached from the field, causing it to take a triangular shape, and she moved around to stand opposite Neji. She made a few hand signs and then thrust her arm through the field, holding her hand out to him.

Neji didn't turn to look at Tenten, just coolly took the woman's hand and allowed her to pull him outside. From this simple contact he could have killed her instantly, but that would pose an unacceptable risk to Tenten, who would probably be killed in retaliation. He too had reached the conclusion that his only course of action now was to submit.

But he had no intention of being tortured. Instead he reached back into his pack and withdrew the message, a small sealed scroll addressed to the Kazekage. "This is the message you want," he said, holding it up for the woman to see. "We had it all along. I will give it to you in exchange for my teammate's life."

"Fine," said the woman, reaching for it. Neji pulled it back from her grasp.

"No," he said firmly. "First you release her."

She eyed him. "She's no good to me now that I know you've got it. I could just kill her now."

"You could," he conceded. "But if you do that I will destroy this message as my last act, then take my own life. You'll be left with nothing – no message, no hostages."

She snarled at him. "I don't trust you not to do that anyway, or attack us once she's free. It seems we've reached an impasse."

Neji nodded thoughtfully. "Thankfully I am more creative than you. Send your man inside the field to tie up my teammate. I am her captain; I will order her to allow it. Then you will release the force field and I will give you the scroll. Think about it – once Tenten is tied up, even if I break my word and attack you it will be five on one, and you'll stand an excellent chance of getting the scroll anyway. I won't destroy the message and kill myself, because that would leave my comrade helpless in your grasp. _You_ won't try to harm her after receiving the scroll, because that would mean fighting with me. Even though you would probably win you would lose lives and possibly the message in the process, in a battle you no longer have any reason to fight. You get the scroll, I get my teammate. What do you say?"

The Grass woman thought hard. She felt that he was trying to trick her but couldn't see how; his plan still left her with a decisive advantage at every step.

"Fine," she said at last. Then she turned to the Grass-nin who had left the field with her. "Ken'ichi, I want you to go inside the field and tie up the Leaf brat. Make sure it's good and tight, so she can't escape."

Ken'ichi scowled at her, gestured roughly in Neji's direction. "Are you _sure_ about that? He's up to something!"

The woman's eyes narrowed. "I'm sure," she spat. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll obey me. _Now_."

Still grumbling, casting the occasional suspicious glance over his shoulder at Neji, the man walked back to the force field, made the same rapid hand signs as the woman had earlier, and stepped inside.

"Tenten," called Neji without taking his eyes from his adversary, "do not resist in any way. That is an order."

Tenten did as she was told. She _knew_ that Neji had worked out some strategy, had known it since he offered to surrender the message. He was brilliant and perfect and she had only to trust him.

Tenten was quickly and securely tied up, both hands and feet, and laid out on the ground. The feeling of helplessness and humiliation burned in her, but she was sure she would have revenge soon enough.

"Now," said Neji. "Release the force field."

The woman scowled at him and hesitated a moment, then called out, "You heard him – let it go!" Her ninja exchanged brief looks of trepidation, and obeyed.

The shimmering curtain blinked out of existence. Lying flat on her back and facing upward, all Tenten could see now was the high blue sky. She turned her head to look at Neji, not wanting to miss the culmination of his plan.

He waited a moment while the Grass-nin moved away from their positions surrounding Tenten and came to join their leader. Then he extended his arm and gave her the scroll.

There was a charged pause during which both she and Neji regarded each other, considering options.

At last the woman spoke. "Well," she said, "you're right. It's not worth it to fight you now – our only target was this message. Don't follow us, if you want to live." Then she lifted a hand to signal her team, and with a rushing sound they disappeared.

In the silence Neji made his way over to Tenten and used a _kunai_ to sever her bonds. "Time to return to Konoha," he said. "We have to tell the Hokage what's happened as soon as possible."

Tenten shook her head as if trying to clear it and looked at him with confusion in her large brown eyes. "But … what about the message? What is your plan?"

"Plan?" he asked, pale brow creasing slightly. "What plan?"

How could he be so dense? "The _plan_!" she insisted. "To get that message back! To take out those Grass-nin!"

Neji shook his head slowly. "I don't think that's possible," he replied. "That force field jutsu they've got could be used to protect the scroll as well as imprison us. I looked at it closely, and it has no weaknesses. Also if they're smart they've all memorized the message and split up by now; we'd never catch them all in time. I'm afraid the message is lost."

"But … but … you _meant_ for this to happen? From the moment you volunteered to step outside?"

He nodded. "It was clear there was no other way."

She could not understand. This … _surrender_ was so at odds with everything she knew about him. "I-I was so sure you had a plan!"

He closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly. "I'm sorry to disappoint you," he said quietly. "Maybe if I was Shikamaru I could have figured a way to save you and the message. But I knew I could only save one. I chose you."

He looked up at her impassively. He was the same as always – calm, expressionless, beautiful. But to her he was completely changed.

The man she saw was not a monument to perfection nor an embodiment of purity. Clarity, precision, excellence – these things had always moved her deeply, and she had thought that worshipping those qualities in Neji was the same thing as loving him. But worship was for gods and ideals, not people. A god could never be reached, an ideal could never be touched. Yet Neji's choice made it clear that she had, in fact, reached him.

The one who'd failed to see, whose gaze was fixed too high, was _her_, not him. Behind the genius she had missed the kind, passionate, fallible man.

But Tenten was one who learned from her mistakes, who never missed the target once she knew where it was. After that failed mission her shallow admiration gave way to a more complex emotion that she recognized as love. As a motivation it had tremendous power, for she was determined that Neji should never have to choose between his wellbeing and hers again. If he had weaknesses she would learn to cover them, so that they might together achieve the perfection neither was capable of alone.


	4. Love, Part 2

_Love, Part 2_

It was love.

In the beginning Tenten was like any other teenaged kunoichi – fantasizing about invincible, unflappable, coolly handsome shinobi, sending longing looks and giggles in the direction of Neji Hyuuga and Sasuke Uchiha. Homely and untalented, Rock Lee scarcely entered into her awareness except as the occasional object of pity.

Then they were assigned to their first teams.

She had been philosophical about it at first, believing it only fair that she should have to bear the burden of Lee's presence in return for receiving the blessing of Neji's. At Gai's behest they told each other their goals, and Neji was predictably aloof, casually refusing to justify that which was so obviously his destiny. Then it was Tenten's turn and for the first time she gave voice to a secret, half-formed ambition: to become as great a kunoichi as the Leaf's own Lady Tsunade. She'd been afraid that her team would laugh at her but none of them did. Neji just ignored her, Gai nodded solemnly, and Lee responded by bouncing up and down in his seat and shooting his hand skyward like a teacher's pet. It was annoying but somehow touching that hearing her dream should leave him so eager to voice his own.

"I want to prove that you can become a great ninja even without being able to use _ninjutsu _or _genjutsu_!" Lee proclaimed. "That is everything to me!"

Neji mocked him and there was an argument, and Tenten felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. What Lee so fervently wanted was surely impossible, and she couldn't help but wonder if the same was true of her own goals. If starting out as a loser meant you had to stay that way forever, was she then consigned to a lifetime of being merely "average"?

It was bitter to realize she had more in common with Lee than Neji.

Her doubts remained at the core of her being, dug in deep like a splinter in tender flesh, but Gai's merciless training left her with hardly any time to ponder them. Every day he pushed them harder, and to everyone's surprise the one who grew the most was Lee. He fell again and again, knocked down by his own mistakes or by Neji's Gentle Fist, but rose each time for another try. Words of discouragement or sensibleness had no effect on him, for he had chosen his road and would walk it to the end. Tenten watched and learned there were more kinds of strength than she had supposed.

Along with Gai's rigor Lee adopted his attitude and style of dress, and these combined with Lee's childlike enthusiasm made her teammate an almost comical figure. Tenten played the voice of reason while Neji snickered derisively, indicating more than once that he considered Team Gai a bad joke. She would not have dreamed of arguing with him, but when her lungs were burning for air and her muscles screaming in agony, when her body threatened to give out under the strain, she would look over at Lee striking that ridiculous thumbs-up pose or catch sight of his lurid green jumpsuit out of the corner of her eye and be filled with a new lightness. Maybe Lee _was_ a joke, but humor was one of the few things that made a ninja's violent life bearable, and it could always be carried into battle.

The _chuunin_ exams came, an unqualified disaster. Tenten was humiliated in front of her team and all her comrades of the Leaf, and when she awoke in the hospital she received news of Lee's crushing defeat.

"He'll never be a ninja again," Neji told her. Then he gave a graceful shrug and said arrogantly, "It's all for the best, anyway. This life was impossible for him from the start."

She looked at this icy genius with his pitiless eyes and tried to imagine him as her only teammate. There would be no laughter or encouragement, only silence and a constant sense of inferiority. She admitted to herself that part of what had kept her engaged in her training over the past year had been Lee. Curiosity about what new insane thing he might do gave her a reason to get up in the morning. Now, though, it seemed she would have to find new reasons.

She had other visitors during her convalescence, including Sakura, who stopped in one day on her way from visiting Sasuke.

"You look better," the pink-haired girl told her. "I'm sure you'll be out soon. Thanks to Lee you didn't have too many punctures or slashes to treat."

Tenten's brow knit. " 'Thanks to Lee?'''

"Didn't anybody tell you? After you were knocked out on that huge fan, Temari tried to toss you onto the floor on top of all your weapons. Lee jumped down and caught you. He told Temari off for treating you like that after you tried your best. For a while it even looked like he would attack her."

"No," said Tenten after a moment, "no one told me." Gai had been distracted, and Neji had no doubt considered the whole thing irrelevant. But it was _not_ irrelevant. Lee's voice had been the one cheering her on in the midst of her hopeless match and praising her even after she lost, and his arms had caught her when she fell. She could think of no one, now that Lee was gone, who would lend her that kind of unqualified support.

But Tenten's hollow sense of loss did not last long, for her idol Tsunade returned to Konoha and healed Lee. He was back and undaunted, bringing color and laughter to her days once more. Now, finally, she had begun to appreciate all he was to her.

Unfortunately it was a strictly one-sided infatuation. Lee was loyal and dependable, but his romantic attention was fixed solely on Sakura. His bold declarations of love for her were painful to watch, as he was gently and repeatedly rebuffed. Tenten supposed Sakura still saw Lee the same way she once had – as an exasperating and clownish friend. Whatever, Tenten could wait, until either Sakura reciprocated Lee's affections or Lee admitted defeat. In the meantime she worked harder than ever, with Lee's admiration as a constant source of validation.

"Tsunade-sama herself could not do it better!" he enthused, watching her at target practice. _He remembered_, thought Tenten, looking off to where the sunlight glittered on her distant _kunai_. Of all the shinobi of the Leaf he was the one who knew her best.

Just outside the village one day, on a stretch of grass hemmed in by the bend of a swift clear brook, Tenten found Rock Lee and Naruto Uzumaki sparring. Sakura sat watching with a look of disgust on her face.

"_Why_," she asked as Tenten came to join her, "would they spend their time on such a stupid exercise? They're not even using any special techniques – just pounding each other with plain old _taijutsu_."

Indeed, Tenten knew that Naruto possessed sage techniques that would have made it child's play for him to crush Lee in an instant. But both his face and Lee's were covered with bruises and scrapes. They were also both smiling.

"Male bonding?" Tenten suggested.

Sakura snorted. "That's exactly what Lee said! Then he gave me his 'good guy' pose and _winked_."

Tenten laughed and settled into the grass. "He does that," she replied affectionately. "Are you here to make sure they don't kill each other?"

"Hah! It would serve them both right if they did!" But Sakura's eyes never left Naruto as she spoke.

Suddenly the two sparring ninja leapt high into the air, aiming vicious blows at one another's heads. They connected simultaneously and began to plummet downwards, toward the rock-strewn grassy ground.

Tenten acted without consciously deciding to. From this height a fall might seriously injure Lee, and her body moved on its own to prevent this. Years spent in the company of Team Gai had made her very fast indeed; she reached Lee in plenty of time. The impact of his muscle-bound and weighted form knocked the breath out of her as she looked up to see Sakura kneeling a little distance away, having done the same thing for Naruto.

"Sakura-chan," said Naruto groggily.

"You _idiot_!" she shouted. "I _told_ you that sparring like that was dangerous! Now we'll have to go to the hospital so I can treat you for a concussion!" So saying, she pulled him none-too-gently to his feet and began dragging him off toward the village. She moved quickly and did not look back.

"Oh," said Lee in a small voice, watching them recede into the distance. "I suppose … she knew she did not have to worry about me."

"That's right," said Tenten firmly. She had lowered Lee onto the ground and was crouched behind him, supporting him with an arm across his back.

"But, you know Tenten, Sakura came to catch Naruto. Did she think he would take more damage from the fall?" Rock Lee turned to her uncertainly, a wounded look in his round eyes.

"Well," said Tenten carefully, "when you care about someone, sometimes you just act to help them out of instinct. There's not a lot of 'thinking' involved."

Lee glanced at the now empty place where Sakura had knelt with Naruto. He sighed. "I see," he replied. "So she caught him because she cares about him. More than she cares about me."

Tenten remained silent. Lee had never exactly been quick-witted.

But then he turned his head the other way, to where her hand still rested on his arm. He stared at it a while as though it were a foreign thing, thick brows contracted in thought.

"But then," he began slowly, "then you caught me, Tenten." He looked up at her, a question on his face.

She laid her other hand on his shoulder. "Yes," she said, "I did. And you caught me a long time ago."

Lee's nature was direct and forthright, not much given to subtlety, but this time he understood what she was trying to say.

Rock Lee considered even the smallest achievements cause for celebration, and with him as her guide and best cheerleader Tenten made a lot of them. Small steps, themselves insignificant, that in totality produced a kunoichi to be feared and admired. Joyfully and for love's sake Tenten walked with Lee along his ninja way, to its inevitable splendid end.


	5. Justice

_Justice_

It was justice.

To be more precise it was the desire to see justice done and the knowledge that strength was required to achieve this end. With every _kunai_ that found its target Tenten felt herself one infinitesimal step closer to attaining her goal, which was no less than the perfect union of power and righteousness. Her chosen jutsu was the embodiment of this ideal, for her skill allowed her to strike a target with unerring exactness. With her there was no collateral damage; her weapons flew where she willed and nowhere else.

Tenten's love of justice was innate, borne in her blood and refined at the feet of her first teacher: her mother Tomoko, a renowned magistrate from the Land of Water. They had come to Konoha as exiles and guests of the Third Hokage so early in Tenten's life that she could not remember ever having any other home, but the story of her origins and the death of her father was one she learned early and never forgot.

Her parents had lived a quiet and unremarkable life in the capital of the Land of Water, an island country separated from the turmoil of the mainland by its own proud tradition and also by the sea. Her mother was a mid-ranked civilian judge and her father a printer of books, who provided to his wife the texts for her research and the empty scrolls for her written verdicts. It was a harmonious and somewhat bookish union, at least until the massacre in Kirigakure, the Village Hidden in the Mist.

Kiri was the ninja village of the Land of Water, the heart of the country's military power. It was infamous among the five great nations for its academy's graduation exam, in which children were forced to fight one another to the death. Most residents of the Land of Water regarded this tradition with pride, saying that it proved their shinobi were harder and more ruthless than any other. Of those with any modicum of influence only Tomoko voiced misgivings, the single note of dissonance in a chorus of approval. So when Zabuza Momochi perpetrated his horrific slaughter and eliminated an entire cohort of Mist shinobi, and public sentiment turned against the practice at last, Tenten's mother emerged as a prescient voice of reason, gaining both power and prestige.

Then Zabuza tried to assassinate the Mizukage.

The outcry was immediate; even the other ninja of the Mist had always regarded Zabuza with trepidation, and now that he was shown to have a lust for power equaling his considerable talents it was universally agreed that he should be executed without delay. The Mizukage went further, ordering the death of all of Zabuza's co-conspirators. But this was too much for Tomoko, for some of the condemned were simple merchants whose only crime was selling Zabuza supplies. It was clear to her they did not deserve to die and she made her opinion widely known. This was a mistake.

Had she been less prominent it would not have mattered, but her influence meant the Mizukage could not ignore this challenge to his authority. He added her name, and for good measure the names of her husband and infant daughter, to the list of targets for assassination.

They came at night and in force, three Mist-nin with orders to kill. By some miracle Tenten's father managed to hold them off while his wife took their daughter and ran, buying time for his family at the cost of his life. Tomoko and Tenten fled across the sea to the Land of Fire, leaving behind them bitter memories and a home drenched in innocent blood. Tomoko was not safe living anywhere but Konoha, where the presence of Leaf-nin put her out of the Mizukage's reach.

"We owe the Leaf a great deal," she told her daughter one day. "So you will go to their Academy and learn to serve them as a shinobi. I have nothing with which to repay them, except for you." She looked down at her daughter, whose eyes were the same rich brown as her father's. "I fear violence, Tenten. But that is a weakness that you will not share. Always remember: _justice is impossible without strength_. I had justice while the Mizukage had all the strength, and because of this your father died. But if you work hard you will have both the ability to know what is right and the power to see it done."

So Tenten entered the Academy, spurred on by her mother's words. She disdained techniques of wholesale destruction, choosing instead to focus on precision and control. She was especially good with edged weapons of all types: something about the sliver flash and clear ring of steel seemed to match her ethics perfectly.

"That's interesting," Tomoko said when Tenten explained her choice. "Our land is known for its seven great swordsmen. Kisame Hoshigake was one. Zabuza Momochi was another."

Tenten started at this news. There was no rebuke in her mother's words and yet she still felt shame. "Should I focus on something else?" she asked in horror.

Tomoko considered for a moment. "No, I think not," she finally answered. "You are a Leaf-nin now, but you come from the Land of Water and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Kisame and Zabuza have dirtied our country's swordsmanship, so in a way your jutsu is a kind of redemption. You will use your art in the way they should have used theirs."

Tenten resolved to do exactly that, to become as skilled in her way as the Leaf's own Lady Tsunade. Only then would she be strong enough to attain her mother's dream.

Assigned to a team, she found real companionship for the first time. Her comrades suspected her foreign origins but never questioned her, and for her part she did not volunteer any information. She did not want their pity, just their respect and their friendship.

During her training she learned to summon, enabling her to carry on her person a great many weapons stored in specially prepared scrolls. At first she used a variety of small unremarkable scrolls, and then eventually she graduated to a single large one. Her teammates never knew that the huge, unusually fine scroll she carried was all that remained of her father, made by him years ago and kept by Tomoko with the intention of writing a treatise on the Land of Water. But instead of Tomoko's words it contained Tenten's weapons, so that when Tenten went into battle she did so armed with her mother's ideals and her father's workmanship. It proved to be a potent combination.

She learned over time that injustice was as rife in the Land of Fire as it was in the Land of Water, and that some of it could be found in her own village, in the conduct of her allies. One afternoon they were on a mission many kilometers south of Konoha, escorting a merchant convoy down a forest road. Neji had his Byakugan engaged and was continuously scanning the surrounding woods, and Tenten and Lee were both tense, on guard. The cargo they were escorting would be a tempting target for thieves.

Neji drew in a sharp breath and turned to her. "Three shinobi, one hundred meters to the right," he said tersely, and they were off, racing into the woods to meet the enemy.

They came to an oblong clearing, a long thin gap in the foliage as though a line of trees had forgotten to grow. It was cast in deep green shadow shot through with golden columns of sunlight — difficult visual conditions. She turned to the right to ask Neji more specifically about the location of their target.

Neji was gone. Lee, who had been on her left, was also gone.

Tenten took a deep steadying breath and turned slowly in place, every sense attuned to her surroundings. Of her teammates or her enemies there was no sign. All at once she became aware of a low rumble, felt more then heard, which grew gradually into a roar that drowned out even the sound of her own pounding heart.

Directly ahead of her, too broad to dodge and too high to leap, was a wall of water. It rolled toward her with incredible speed, obliterating obstructions as it came. She barely had time to feel the first glimmer of panic before it was upon her, striking her like a giant fist and knocking her off her feet.

She tumbled head over heels; she could not tell which way was up; around her swirled uprooted trees like so many matchsticks. She tried to scream and water rushed into her lungs, while her heavy pack and scroll pulled her inexorably downward toward the now submerged forest floor.

It came to her that she was going to die.

Ironic, that she should escape death in the Land of Water only to drown in the Land of Fire. But _how _was this happening? There were no lakes or rivers nearby, no bodies of water whose volume even approached this flood. It must surely be the action of the enemy, but no water-style jutsu was powerful enough to drown an entire forest.

Unless it wasn't a water-style jutsu at all.

Lungs burning, black spots swimming before her eyes, Tenten made a hand sign and mouthed the word "Release!"

Instantly she was dry, curled into the fetal position on a bed of rotting leaves, hacking and drawing in great shuddering breaths. Neji and Lee were beside her, quite purple.

Across from her on the other side of the clearing was a shadowy figure. Tenten wasted no time, drawing a _kunai_ and flinging it outward in the same motion. She hit her target dead-on, and in doing so freed her teammates from the _genjutsu_ binding them.

"Neji! Lee!" she said in alarm, as they both resumed breathing. Eventually they sat up, still gasping for air.

"The convoy," Neji rasped finally. He had seen three shinobi in the woods, and this caster of _genjutsu_ was surely meant to distract them while the other two went for the cargo.

Tenten nodded and got to her feet, while Neji and Lee did the same. They returned to the convoy to find it in chaos, shouts echoing through the forest as people swarmed up and down the line of carts and wagons.

"There!" said Lee, pointing at a pair of men near the end of the line. They were laden with heavy sacks and running ponderously for the woods.

The Leaf-nin caught up to them easily, and one was dealt a vicious punch to the cheek by Lee. He went down immediately. The other was cagier, dropping his bag and nimbly dodging Tenten's volley of _shuriken_. Lee kicked him in the ribs and he fell coughing to his hands and knees, spraying the ground with crimson droplets.

It was clear he wouldn't get up again. Tenten relaxed and made to stow the extra _shuriken_ she had drawn, but stopped abruptly when she saw Neji go into his stance for the Eight Trigrams: 64 Palms.

It had all happened in the space of a few seconds, so Neji's readiness to strike the enemy directly after Lee was understandable. But the thief was clearly weak, to be incapacitated with a singe kick; he would never survive having his chakra points pressed. Neji would have realized this if he had taken a moment to think, yet he showed no signs of stopping and Tenten knew instinctively that he would not.

She acted.

There was a time when she wouldn't have dared, for the difference in strength between her and Neji had always seemed insurmountable. But the years of training and experience imbued her with confidence. For the first time she felt what her mother had only spoken of: the confluence of justice and power, like a sword sliding securely into the scabbard.

Her _shuriken_ inscribed a perfect arc from her hand to curve between Neji and the fallen thief; one of them caught the edge of his sleeve and made a small tear. He reflexively checked his forward movement and stumbled slightly, then straightened up to pin her with a white-eyed glare.

"What are you doing?" he demanded coldly. The thief was still cowering on the ground, oblivious to his brush with death.

"Do you really mean to kill him?" she asked in return.

Neji was silent, and though to anyone else he would have looked expressionless Tenten could tell that he was angry. It was the _genjutsu_, most likely – Team Gai's only weakness, and a source of unspoken frustration for her genius teammate, who was unaccustomed to struggling with anything. He was proud and skillful, and it obviously stung him to be humbled by weak shinobi like these. There was a part of him that _wanted_ to grind his defeated foe into dust.

But death was not an appropriate penalty for theft, and in any case it was not their place to mete out punishment. Tenten unrolled her giant scroll a few lengths and bit her thumb, shedding blood in preparation to summon. "Let it go," she said deliberately. "It's over now."

His eyes flickered and she could practically hear his thoughts, as his adrenaline drained and reason reasserted itself. Her battle-ready posture had attracted his attention, arresting him like the volley of _shuriken_ she'd thrown. He knew her for the skilled kunoichi she was and so took in her words with an attentiveness he would never have given a civilian. Her strength spoke to his, and was heard.

"All right," he said finally. "We'll tie them up and bring them back to the Leaf. Lee, go get the one in the forest, the one who cast the _genjutsu._"

Lee ran off to do as instructed, and a week later they returned to Konoha, with a completed mission and three prisoners in tow.

Tenten was under no illusions about the world she lived in. It was violent and dirty and the innocent often died. The shinobi who wanted something more had to be more than right; they also had to be _strong_. Strong enough to be feared by enemies and heard by friends, to be heeded by authority that recognized only one kind of power. Justice was dead without strength and strength was empty without justice, and so in her life Tenten sought to weld them permanently together, to make of the combination something new – _change_.


	6. Loneliness

_Loneliness_

It was loneliness.

From the beginning she had been alone, and as she grew loneliness crept into her spirit like a contagion, like an incurable sickness common to all orphans. Her caretakers were kind and good-hearted, but she quickly learned the cruel truth that they had their own lives and families, and to them she was just another assignment. At the end of the day they went home, while she retired to her little room with its single window and scratched-up furniture, a place to which she didn't belong and where nothing belonged to her. In all of Konoha, in all of the Land of Fire, there was not a single person for whom she was really _necessary_.

While she was still an infant her parents had come to Konoha as immigrants – no one knew from exactly where. Their first night in the village, a fire swept through the wooden building where they had rented a single room. Her mother had tossed her out of a small window into the arms of waiting villager, then perished with her husband in the flames. No one was left who knew their names or their story, and the only clue to the baby's identity was the name embroidered on her hand-sewn clothes: Tenten. Tenten still had the stained dress she had been wearing that night, tucked safely into the top drawer of her dresser. It was the only remnant of her past.

Despite its status as a ninja village, Konoha contained relatively few orphans. There was one boy at the orphanage, however, who took a liking to Tenten. His name was Hideo, and he was much older than her, a student at Konoha's ninja academy. After graduation he left the orphanage for good to begin his new life as a _genin_. Tenten resigned herself to never seeing him again, but to her surprise he dropped by occasionally to regale her with (much exaggerated) tales of his exploits.

"And then," he was saying to her one afternoon, as they sat together on the low stone wall running around the orphanage, "I threw my _kunai_ straight at the enemy, killing him instantly. Then I freed Fumio and Shizuka. They thanked me for saving their lives, of course." Fumio and Shizuka were Hideo's teammates.

"Wow!" exclaimed Tenten, gazing up at her friend in admiration. He looked completely different from the desperate boy she used to know. His body was taut with new muscle, his chin tilted upward with confidence, his eyes glittering with enthusiasm. Gone was the haggard, hungry look of the unwanted. The golden sunlight reflecting off his forehead-protector seemed to crown him with a radiant halo.

Hideo looked down at his companion, so tiny she fit entirely within his slanting black shadow. He felt a stab of guilt, not for the pack of lies he had just told her, but for the glint of desperation in her wide brown eyes, for the way she clutched at his attention like a drowning man at a life preserver. He had once had eyes like that, too.

"Tenten," he said, suddenly serious, "why don't you go to the Academy next year? You'll be old enough then."

The little girl frowned, looked down at her feet. "I thought about it," she confessed in a soft voice, "but I'm scared."

"Aren't you more scared of staying here, like this – all alone?"

She looked back up at him sharply. Orphans did not speak of their loneliness, for fear of making it concrete, permanent. "Even if I become a ninja," she said slowly, "I don't see how that will change anything."

Hideo reached out to take her small hand and looked directly into her eyes. "It will change everything," he said earnestly. "All the ninja of the Leaf are comrades. They would all die for each other. They _need_ each other, Tenten. If you become one of them, they'll need you too, and you'll need them. You'll be part of something important, and you'll never be alone."

Tenten returned his steady gaze. She was not as gullible as Hideo thought – she knew, for instance, that the mission he had just been bragging about had in fact been a routine cat-catching exercise, not a battle – and she thought that this might be another one of his tall tales. But she was unwilling to contradict her only friend, so she remained silent and filed his words away for future reference.

Six months later Hideo was killed in the line of duty. Tenten was not permitted to attend the funeral.

On the day of his cremation she snuck out to say her final goodbye, and arrived at the crematorium just after they pulled his body from the furnace. She crept silently into a room set with a rectangular table, upon which was laid the gurney containing the hot gray ash and bleach-white bone that was all that remained of Hideo. Three people clad in black stood around the table – a tall man who seemed to emanate power, a short freckled boy, and a beautiful girl with blonde hair and green eyes. All of them wore Leaf forehead-protectors, from which Tenten surmised they must be Hideo's team – his _jounin_ sensei, Fumio, and Shizuka. They did not notice her as she stepped through the open doorway and hid herself behind a cabinet, their attention being wholly occupied with the task at hand.

With long chopsticks they were carefully picking the shards of bone from the ashes, passing them to one another, chopstick to chopstick, before depositing them in a beautifully painted urn. The bones fell in and struck the porcelain with a clear pure ringing noise, the only sound in the room save for the sobbing of the two _genin_ – Shizuka's wails were loud and piercing, Fumio's muffled and hoarse. Fumio's hands shook.

Tenten's eyes began to swim with tears. She cried them silently, a skill she had mastered early on. Only a few weeks ago Hideo had been so exuberantly alive, and now all that remained of him was carbon flakes and calcium driftwood. She wept for him and for herself, for the boy who had been only person to both understand and care about her.

"Goodbye, Hideo," she mouthed soundlessly.

There are a lot of bones in the human body, and so the bone-picking ceremony continued long enough for Tenten's tears to dry up and her vision to clear. His teammates, though, were still weeping, and with a jolt Tenten saw a tear leak from the eye of the stoic _jounin_ and run down his cheek to drip onto the floor. Their grief was genuine as they performed this ceremony normally reserved for the family of the deceased. Hideo, of course, had had no family.

At least not biologically.

At night, after the setting of the sun and before the rising of the moon, Tenten had often lain awake and imagined her own death. It was a macabre pastime for any child, but common enough among those who had lost their families. She pictured her body lifeless and still, the scalding inferno of the crematorium, a small pile of ashes in a plain white urn. Her grave would be unmarked and anonymous, a monument to propriety and not to grief. No one would visit it on holy days, and no one would mourn. It would be as if she had never lived at all.

This was the death of the orphan, the death of the abandoned.

Except that Hideo's final rites were attended by his team, whose devastation was palpable. In taking up his bones they could not deny his death, could not ignore the gaping hole he had left in the fabric of their lives. Clearly, by their reverence and their pain, he had _meant_ something to them. He might have begun his life in solitude, but he did not end it that way.

Tenten was at last convinced. The following fall she entered the Academy.

There, her natural reticence and good sense served her well, as did her inborn talent with projectiles. Sometimes when the _kunai_ flew from her hand to strike the precise center of her target, she remembered Hideo and his outrageous lies and smiled, and wondered if she was better at this than he had been. She vowed to become as strong as Lady Tsunade, so that everyone might know her and rely on her. She flattered herself that she was well on her way.

Then teams were assigned, and Tenten regarded Neji and Lee with tense expectation. She wanted fervently for them to become to her what Fumio and Shizuka had been to Hideo. They trained together and fought together, and though their efforts produced strength, they did not produce companionship.

Lee was focused entirely on his own struggle, and the only one who seemed truly able to reach him was Gai. Though she didn't know it at the time, Neji was also at war with himself, and he masked his pain with an impenetrable air of aloofness. The result was that even when she was in the company of her team, Tenten still felt isolated.

Had her teammates truly depended on her things might have been different, for you cannot ignore something that is vital to your existence. But Lee and Neji quickly became so strong that the idea that they would ever need Tenten was laughable. She helped them train and did her part during missions, yet never once did she feel really important to them. Her role could have been filled by anyone; she was just a stand-in. Her confidence evaporated and she reflected darkly that if she died now there would be no one to shed tears over her ashes, and hardly any disruption to the efficient operation of her squad.

She kept training, though, hoping to become strong enough to be needed. Only then would she have escaped from loneliness, her oldest enemy.

One spring day found them fleeing over a swollen river, crossing a wooden bridge to the flat, grassy opposite bank. Their pursuers were a party of ten Stone ninja, ferociously skilled and intent on reclaiming the information Team Gai had stolen.

Team Gai was the fastest squad in the Leaf and so they had a sizable lead on the Stone-nin, but their stamina was not inexhaustible and they were fading quickly. A hundred meters past the bridge Neji suddenly came to a stop, hunching over with his hands on his knees, breathing in heavy, harsh gasps.

"Neji!" exclaimed Lee, "We cannot stop now! If we are captured we will die!"

"I know that," panted Neji, straightening up and brushing his long hair back over his shoulders. "But at this rate we'll be overtaken anyway. We have to stop them now."

"How?" asked Lee. "We do not posses any long-range jutsu, and we are badly outnumbered in hand-to-hand combat."

"You and I cannot strike from a distance, Lee. But Tenten can." Neji turned to her. "Tenten, can you hit the bridge from here?"

She squinted back toward the bridge, whose underside was only inches from the rushing water. It was a great distance, certainly, but not beyond her reach.

"Yes," she replied. "But even if I take out the bridge, Neji, they'll just run across the water to reach us." She could clearly make out their pursuers, growing closer with every passing second.

"True," he conceded. "That is why I want to you wait until they are _on_ the bridge before destroying it."

Lee let out a soft _oh_ of comprehension, and Tenten drew four _kunai_ from her pack. She tied explosive tags to their ends, and gripped them tightly in her right hand. "I'll use the kind that detonate on impact," she said. "If I throw now and detonate with a hand sign, they might see the tags before stepping on the bridge."

Neji nodded his agreement, and all three of them turned to wait.

It wasn't long before the Stone ninja had reached the bridge. They stopped momentarily and stared in confusion at their quarry, clearly surprised that they were no longer fleeing.

"They suspect something," said Neji.

"Then we must make them believe we have decided to turn and fight," said Lee. He stepped forward a pace and waved his arms frantically over his head and jumped up and down in place. "Hey, Stone-nin!" he shouted in a booming voice. "We are done with running! We will fight you and defeat you!"

Across the river, Tenten saw one of the Stone-nin point at Lee. She could not hear their conversation from this distance, but it looked to her as if more than one of them was laughing.

The first Stone ninja stepped confidently onto the wooden planking of the bridge. His comrades followed.

Tenten held her breath. If the lead Stone-nin reached the near bank before the hindmost stepped onto the bridge, their plan would fail. But that didn't happen; there soon came an instant when all ten of the pursuers were strung out along wooden planking, suspended over the water.

"Now!" she hissed, and her arm shot forward like a catapult, releasing four _kunai_ to arc up into the sky, glinting sliver and trailing flapping paper streamers. She was so skilled she needed only one throw to send four projectiles at four different targets, and though the paper tags changed the flight of the _kunai_ that was no impediment to her. Each _kunai_ landed squarely on its intended target – two on the far side of the bridge, two on the near side.

A split second after impact, they exploded.

For an instant the light of the sun was overwhelmed by a brighter, whiter flash, as though ball lightning had somehow descended from the cloudless sky to envelop the Stone ninja. A great tearing _boom_ reached their ears, and wood splinters, gouts of water, and chunks of mud were thrown high into the air.

"You got them!" said Lee.

Neji had his Byakugan engaged and was peering into the scattering debris cloud. "Three survived," he reported. "They are struggling in the water now, but it will only be a matter of time before they manage to stand on the river's surface."

"Their heads are above water?" asked Tenten.

Neji nodded.

"About where are they?"

"Fifteen meters downstream."

She drew a handful of _shuriken _and released them with one sweeping motion of her arm, sending a line of whirring steel stars toward the location Neji had identified. She spread them over a wide area but spaced them only ten centimeters apart, a gap too small to encompass a human head. They flew low and fast, passing through the windblown grass and skimming just a few centimeters above the roiling water. A few halted their progress once they reached the river, embedding deep into enemy skulls.

"That's the last of them," said Neji after a moment. "You killed the last three."

"All right Tenten!" said Lee. "You saved our lives!" He grinned and gave her his ridiculous thumbs-up. Just now, she didn't mind so much.

"Hn," grunted Neji. "We could have taken those last three hand-to-hand. But … it was just as well we didn't have to, given our condition. And—" he paused, struggling with his natural tendency never to give praise or express enthusiasm " –the bridge was well done."

Tenten felt a warmth in her chest, and a lightness like she was being lifted off the ground. This time, she had been at the center. Her skill had saved them, and no other would have sufficed. For the first time she knew what it was to be an integral part of something, to be _needed_.

It was glorious. It drove the loneliness from her heart entirely.

The feeling did not last, of course. Like all emotions it was soon buried under other sensations, other experiences. And the loneliness returned, creeping up when Tenten returned to her empty little apartment, when she found herself unable to sleep in the hours before moonrise, when Neji or Lee departed for a mission without her. But now she knew it as a temporary affliction, one whose remedy she had the means to obtain. Her skill was the key; it made her important, reliable, and above all _necessary_.

Neji and Lee were indeed strong. But there were things she could do that they could not, gaps in their lives only she could fill. To enlarge that gap, to entrench herself more firmly in the lives and hearts of her comrades, she would risk anything, sacrifice anything. She would train until she had cut out a Tenten-shaped hole from the fabric of the village, that she could slip into perfectly, weave about her permanently. Enmeshed in a great web of trust and companionship, she would escape the loneliness forever, and be an orphan no more.


	7. Loyalty

**A/N: This will be the last chapter, as I'm tapped out on this story. But I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed -- you made this my most-reviewed fic by far, which I think says something about the appeal of Tenten as a character. Thanks!**

_Loyalty_

It was loyalty.

Dedication to the Leaf was learned at her mother's knee, spoon-fed to her along with her baby food. Before she could read she recognized the stylized leaf symbol of Konoha, and knew in a hazy childlike way that it represented something very important indeed.

"Our family has served the Leaf as shinobi for generations," her father said to his wide-eyed brown-haired little girl. "We are a family as old and honorable as any – the Hyuugas or the Uchihas or the Naras. But unlike them, we carry no family name. Clan names are for those who place their family's welfare above the village's. You will introduce yourself to others as 'Tenten,' but you must never forget that your full name is 'Tenten of the Leaf.'"

Like all ideologies inherited rather than adopted, Tenten's loyalty to her village lacked a certain intensity at first. She had never had to justify it to herself or to others and so did not think on it too deeply; it simply _was_. When she reached the appropriate age she entered the Academy as had her parents before her, and there heard from her instructors the same message she received at home: We do this, as we do everything, for Konoha.

She learned the lesson by heart and repeated it on command, stale words devoid of true feeling.

Her skills were old-fashioned – a facility with _kunai_, a sharp eye and good sense. After teams were assigned and she began her career she learned that her motives were similarly old-fashioned, for so many of the best shinobi had deep personal reasons for their work, motives rooted in pain.

Rock Lee had something to prove.

Neji Hyuuga was trying to escape fate.

Naruto Uzumaki wanted to be acknowledged.

Sasuke Uchiha wanted to avenge his clan.

Hinata Hyuuga was trying to better herself.

Gaara of the Sand wanted to prove his own existence.

And Tenten? Tenten just wanted to serve the Leaf, because she had been told all her life that that was the right thing to do. Before the others' powerful stories she felt ashamed, and worried that her second-hand loyalty would not be enough to propel her to the same heights as them. So she hid her real motivations, told everyone that she aimed to become as strong as Konoha's Lady Tsunade. That was true as far as it went, but she never explained that she desired strength for the sake of her village. Sometimes, she even forgot it herself.

Then they all attended the _chuunin_ exams. Tenten lost in the early rounds, but of course Neji advanced to the finals. She watched from the stands as he removed his forehead-protector and told his story to the whole world, and she felt certain that this was the real source of his strength, this raw pain. Lacking that, she wondered if she was doomed to weakness. But something happened that day that convinced her otherwise.

Sarutobi died.

She didn't see it, though it would have been visible from her seat in the stands. She, along with everyone else, was knocked unconscious by a _genjutsu_, and only heard about it later. Sarutobi stood atop the central watchtower with Orochimaru, his ex-student and sworn enemy, and fought to the death with the missing-nin. He was trapped in a force field, cut off from his ANBU guards, faced with the combined strength of one legendary _sannin_ and two resurrected Hokages. He was outmatched and past his prime, yet the ANBU saw him smile confidently as he explained to Orochimaru that real strength comes from having something to protect, and that for him that thing was Konoha and its people. Then Sarutobi performed the jutsu that defeated his foes at the cost of his own life. He did it joyfully, gratefully, becoming for an instant stronger than he had ever been before, enough to crush two former Hokages and send Orochimaru running.

Tenten had met Sarutobi a couple of times, had known him as a distant but kindly old man. Learning that he had given his life for her affected her deeply, and as she stood in the rain at his funeral, garbed in black and mute with grief, she realized that his motivation had been exactly the same as hers: loyalty to the Leaf. But unlike her, he had known the true meaning of loyalty. It wasn't a slogan learned in class or an heirloom handed down; it was comrades united in grief, a teammate taking the _kunai_ meant for you, an old man giving his life for the village he loved.

Tenten cried then, her tears disguised by the rain. After that she was never the same.

One night, not long after she made _chuunin_, she awoke abruptly to hear screams and shouts, and the sound of people running. She had dressed and armed herself before she was even fully awake, her reflexes quicker than her conscious mind. She exited her home and stood in the moonlit street outside, trying to locate the source of the disturbance. It seemed to be coming from the north, several blocks away.

She ran the whole way, passing out of her own middle-class neighborhood into a district populated by nobility. She spotted a mob of people just up the street, forming a cordon around a huge mansion in the old style. Pushing her way to the front she was stunned to find her teammate Neji and his uncle Lord Hiashi Hyuuga. They were both facing the house and scanning it with their Byakugan. Above the sliding door, a nameplate identified this as the residence of the Hyuuga main branch.

"Tenten!" said Neji as she emerged from the crowd. Incredibly, he seemed relieved to see her. Lord Hyuuga had turned at the sound of his nephew's voice and was staring at her intently.

"What's going on?" she asked crisply.

"Four shinobi have invaded the Hyuuga compound and are holding Lady Hanabi hostage. She's been knocked out, and it seems that they intend to … to perform some sort of ad hoc surgery to remove her eyes."

It was shocking, but Tenten didn't let it faze her. Now was not the time. "Then what are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be in there, rescuing her?"

"We can't." It was Lord Hyuuga who spoke this time. His voice was a hoarse bark, raw with frustration. "They've erected a barrier around the entire mansion. They killed the guards and are alone inside with Hanabi."

Tenten glanced back at the mansion, and now she discerned the shimmer of some kind of jutsu, barely visible against the black night sky.

"You can't get through?"

"No," said Neji. "I've never seen anything like it before. It's a very specific barrier that excludes everyone possessing a certain _kekkei genkai_."

"The Byakugan."

He nodded.

"But … shouldn't Hinata be inside? Can't she take care of this?"

"Hinata's away on a mission," said Hiashi. "And I was out late at a meeting. They picked exactly the right time to do this."

Tenten's brow knit. She stared hard at the residence, imagining the little girl inside, afraid and in danger.

"I understand," she said. "I'm going in."

Hiashi nodded his approval, but Neji hesitated. "They were good enough to eliminate all of the guards," he said. "It would be better if you had some backup."

"That would take too long!" said Hiashi. "By the time anyone else arrives, Hanabi could have been blinded and the Byakugan stolen. It has to be now!"

"I agree," said Tenten. There were a few other ninja who resided in the area, but it was anyone's guess whether they were in the village right now or not. In any case none of them were _here_, and it would require several minutes for anyone to arrive from across town. Several minutes might be too long.

"Two of them are in the central room with Hanabi, straight through the front door," Hiashi told her, looking into his mansion to ascertain the position of the enemy. "The other two are stationed at the front and rear doors as lookouts. If you can't kill them, try at least to get in their way, delay their work until help arrives."

"Got it," she said, and stepped through the barrier.

It was an odd sensation, like walking under a waterfall without getting wet. But there was no pain, and at first she drew closer to the front door without impediment.

In the dark a figure leaped out at her, and she was able to track him only by the way he blocked the view of the surrounding buildings; it seemed he was using some kind if invisibility jutsu to cloak himself in darkness. Then he moved into the shadows in front of the house and she lost sight of him entirely, at least until a vicious punch landed on her cheek. She turned at the last second to mitigate the blow, but still tasted blood as she went sprawling.

She sprang to her feet and raised her arms in front of her face for protection. She had also drawn a _kunai_ in each hand, and she stood very still, trying to quiet the pounding of her heart. Suddenly her hand flicked forward and released its weapon to sail unseen through the darkness, and in the next instant there was a wet _thwack_ followed by a cry of pain. A meter or so in front of her the shadows became oddly lumpy, resolving at last into the figure of a man lying prone and still on the ground. The hilt of a _kunai_ protruded from his forehead.

Tenten did not need to see her target to hit it. Hearing was good enough; Gai had trained her to throw her weapons while blindfolded, and now she was as accurate without her vision as she was with it. Her opponent had simply underestimated her, his final mistake.

The enemy's last cry of pain had been heard by his companion at the rear door, and now Tenten saw her second enemy rounding the corner of the house, coming at her with a drawn sword. There was something unusual about the blade – it seemed to be humming, and she knew without being told that even being nicked by it could be lethal. She released a volley of _shuriken_, aiming for various vital points, hoping to prevent him from getting close enough to use his weapon. But he heard them coming as they whistled through the cool night air, and with a swing of his sword cut them all down.

From that single movement Tenten could tell: he was _good_. And now he had closed the distance between them, and she could not avoid close combat. She reached into her pack and quickly drew a scroll, from which she summoned the bo staff that was her preferred weapon at close quarters.

He swung at her head and she dodged, and then his sword arrested its downward arc to dart sideways at her torso. She had to throw herself back and sideways to avoid it, landing awkwardly on her hip. Her enemy smiled as he stepped forward to finish her.

He had analyzed her body position and concluded she could not strike at him, and had his opponent not been a kunoichi he would have been right. But Tenten was far more flexible than he realized, far more flexible than her male teammates. Her right arm brought the bo staff up in an arc, and her body arched as she extended her weapon forward impossibly far to land a blow on the side of his neck. She didn't hit him hard, but then she didn't have to – the spot she'd chosen was a pressure point. He howled in pain and jerked to a halt.

She sprang to her feet and lunged at him, driving a _kunai_ through his sternum and into his heart. Blood spurted from his mouth, and he dropped his sword with a clang. An instant later his body joined it on the ground.

Now there was no one between her and the front door, and she slid it open and jumped silently up into the entryway. A few motionless lumps on the floor might have been the corpses of the Hyuuga guards.

Following Lord Hyuuga's directions, she followed the main corridor straight from the entryway. A light was spilling from an open doorway, and two voices could be heard inside.

"Hurry!" one, a woman, was saying. "I heard some yelling outside. We may not have much time left!"

"I can't rush this," replied her companion, a man. "If something goes wrong and we damage the eyes, all of this will have been for nothing."

Tenten reached the room and paused to consider her options. If she charged inside and attacked the two ninja, there would be substantial risk to Hanabi. Instead, she withdrew a small round mirror from her pack, then stood on her toes to attach it to the top of the open doorway with a wadded-up lump of epoxy. She held her breath as she did it, terrified that they would see her hand as she stretched up and over to press the mirror into place.

But they were too fixated on their current task, and she remained undetected. Out in the hall, she manipulated the wires running from the mirror to her hands until the mirror showed her what she wanted: a view of the scene inside the room. Two shinobi knelt beside the unconscious form of a little girl with pale skin and dark hair – Hanabi Hyuuga. Beside the man was a white cloth laid with surgical instruments, together with a small chest Tenten could only assume was meant for Hanabi's eyes. The man was bent over Hanabi's face, finishing the delicate operation of pinning open the child's eyelids. The woman watched it all intently, while her hands fidgeted impatiently with a _shuriken._

The man took up a scalpel and positioned it over Hanabi's face. It was time. Tenten flung two _kunai_ straight through the open doorway, on a course perpendicular to her enemies.

The woman spotted them first. "What the –" she had time to say, before two more _kunai_, traveling faster, flew into the room to intercept the first pair. They struck the original pair on the flat part of the blade and deflected them, sending one into the chest of the man, one into the neck of the woman. All of it happened in the blink of an eye, so that the invaders had virtually no time to react. They slumped over and were still.

Tenten stepped into the room and, after making sure her opponents were dead, pushed over their corpses to extricate Hanabi. The girl was breathing deeply and seemed to be asleep despite the fact that her eyes were pinned open. Tenten picked her up carefully, intending to bring her outside.

"I'll take her now," said a voice from behind her, and Tenten whirled to see Lord Hyuuga entering the room, followed closely by Neji.

"She's not hurt," replied Tenten, handing the child off to her father. "But how did you get in here?"

"When you killed the pair in here, the barrier collapsed," Neji explained. "It seems one of them was responsible for maintaining it."

She was about to ask him about the ninja she had disabled outside, but then Lord Hyuuga spoke to her.

"Thank you," he said, bowing awkwardly while holding his daughter. "You have saved my daughter and protected my clan. I am in your debt, Tenten … Tenten … " He groped for her missing last name.

"It's just Tenten," she told him. "Of the Leaf. And you don't owe me anything, Lord Hyuuga. I didn't do it for you or for your clan." She paused. "I did it for Konoha."

"Indeed," he said, straightening up to look at her curiously. Neji blinked, a little taken aback. But Tenten felt it was explanation enough.

She went home but did not sleep, thinking back on what she had done. She had gone beyond the barrier alone, one ninja against four. She had been aware that there was every chance she would die, but it was not her life that had been on her mind as she went forward to fight. It was the village, and the danger it would be in should the Byakugan be stolen by their enemies. Driven by her desire to protect Konoha she had been fearless, stronger than she could ever remember. Had this been what Sarutobi felt, behind another barrier that day? He had been right in what he told Orochimaru – a shinobi is never stronger than when he or she is protecting something precious.

Tenten never doubted the power of her own motivation again. Loyalty had given her the power to prevail against overwhelming odds, and it continued to burn steadily in the back of her mind throughout her training and missions. Let her comrades have their more particular, more personal reasons for fighting; she would be content with the reason articulated by the Third Hokage. If the Will of Fire was sufficient cause for him, it was good enough for her.

There came a day when Tenten stood ankle-deep in the rubble of her village, the air choked with dust and smoke. Where Konoha had once stood there was now a ruined crater, a scene of destruction on a massive scale. She looked at her comrades, already sifting through the shattered bricks and splintered beams for salvageables, assembling a field hospital to treat the injured, picking up the pieces of their broken home. There was Neji, helping a family to excavate what remained of their living room. There was Lee, leading a crying little girl by the hand, talking to her jovially and giving her his "good-guy" pose. All of them, including her, were bruised and dirty, and probably smelly too. But Tenten's loyalty swelled up within her and made her smile, for she had never felt stronger, and her beloved Leaf had never looked more beautiful.


End file.
